MSNBC ratings collapse postelection, Fox News surges as cable faces an uncertain future
When a sports team loses, its fans don’t hang around for the postgame show.
The same goes for the tribal habits of cable news audiences.
Viewers have fled left-leaning MSNBC since Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential race to former President Trump on Nov. 5. The audience for the Comcast-owned channel is down 46% compared with the first 10 months of 2024, according to Nielsen data.
CNN, which has long battled ratings swings dictated by news coverage, is down 33% after the election.
Fox News, which last week presented Trump with its “Patriot of the Year” honor, has seen its audience surge. In November, the Murdoch family’s network captured a 70% share of the cable news audience in the weeks since the president-elect won another term in the White House; that’s the largest in its history.
The ratings tumult comes at a time when the cable business is facing an existential crisis, as more consumers are forgoing the pay-TV subscriptions that provide most of its revenue.
The corporate parents of the major news outlets are facing business challenges as well.
CNN is expected to make significant workforce cuts early next year as its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, tries to reduce debt.
Comcast is spinning off MSNBC and its other cable networks into a new company so that the declining business does not drag down its stock price. Some of MSNBC’s biggest stars, including Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and Stephanie Ruhle, have been asked to take pay cuts, as revenue and profit come under pressure.
Although Fox News is more dominant than ever in the ratings, its corporate parent, Fox Corp., also faces uncertainty.
Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to give control of his media empire to his son Lachlan was rejected by a Nevada probate commissioner this week. The proposed change in the family trust, which aimed to cut out the more liberal-leaning Murdoch siblings, has led to speculation that there could be a conflict over the network’s conservative direction after the 93-year-old mogul dies.
While those factors loom, the networks also have to fight the ongoing trend of consumers cutting the cable cord. Fox News, CNN and MSNBC are all currently available in about 66 million pay-TV households, according to Nielsen data, a 28% decline from 2016, the year Trump’s unpredictable presidential candidacy turbocharged their ratings.
Despite the steady erosion of pay-TV coverage, Fox News and MSNBC have maintained their popularity among viewers still using cable.
Fox News will finish the year with an average of 1.5 million viewers over the full day, an increase of 5% from 2016. MSNBC has 820,000 viewers, up 35% from that year.
Fox News scored the most viewers on election night, but all the networks were down from 2018 as traditional TV viewing declines.
CNN, which has faced management changes and a shift away from opinionated hosts, has not fared as well, dropping 34% over the period to 493,000 viewers.
All of the cable news channels saw growth over 2023, thanks to major political events as the party nominations and debates brought in larger audiences. Through Dec. 10, Fox News is up 21%, MSNBC gained 5% and CNN increased 3%.
Trump remains a ratings driver for Fox News, and the network was again the main destination for viewers following his campaign.
From June 27, the date of President Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump, through July 12, Fox News saw its audience increase 51% compared with that period a year earlier, far higher than its competitors.
The levels surged after the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump through July 21, when Biden dropped out of the race — a turning point many Fox News commentators had speculated about for months. The network saw a 147% year-to-year increase over that span.
Just as Trump performed better this time with voters in liberal states such as New York and California, Fox News is seeing ratings lifts in Democratic cities as well. The gains began in October 2023 after the militant group Hamas launched its attack on Israel.
Although the evidence is anecdotal, Fox News executives believe pro-Israel viewers in Democratic-leaning markets came to the network for its Middle East coverage. Some of them have stuck around.
Fox News also has pointed to Nielsen data showing that a growing number of Democrats and self-described independent voters are watching. The network also had the most-watched TV interview with Trump’s Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris, on Oct. 18.
“There is no doubt we are getting new viewers,” Fox Corp. Chief Financial Officer Steve Tomsic said at a recent UBS investors conference. “People think Fox News is just the conservatives of the United States. It’s not.”
But the biggest fan of Fox News will be found in the Oval Office starting in January. Although Trump occasionally grumbles about the network’s news coverage of him, he has dipped deep into its roster of hosts and contributors for Cabinet posts, including his embattled nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
Although the network is polarizing in the public discourse, its fans are loyal. A recent study of election night viewers by media research firm Magid showed Fox News viewers had the highest satisfaction level among those surveyed, followed by audiences for MSNBC, YouTube and local TV stations.
The Fox News audience grew the most after a tough year in which the network paid a $787-million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems over false fraud claims made during coverage of the 2020 election. Just a week after the decision, top-rated host Tucker Carlson was dumped by Murdoch, which led to an overall ratings decline.
But the network has long been successful at bouncing back from disruptions to its program lineup. Jesse Watters, a veteran personality on the network, replaced Carlson in his high-profile time period and is exceeding his ratings performance in total viewers and the 25-to-54 age demographic sought by advertisers.
Even with the exodus of viewers after election day, MSNBC is still on track for a second consecutive year of audience growth, a rarity in the cable business these days.
Nielsen data shows that most of those exiting viewers — probably fatigued or depressed about the election’s outcome — are tuning out news altogether. Many of them have headed for outlets that provide escapist entertainment, such as the Hallmark Channel.
The postelection dropoff has happened before. When Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, MSNBC saw its prime-time ratings decline by 41% in the following weeks.
Fox News saw an audience decline in 2020 after Trump lost to Biden, with viewers particularly irked that the network had called Arizona for the Democrat days ahead of its competition.
MSNBC executives, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, are counting on the network’s typically loyal viewers to return as well, especially as disappointment over the Democratic loss fades and Trump makes news with his campaign promises such as mass deportations of migrants. The hope is its audience numbers will bounce back in January and return to its preelection levels by the spring.
While liberal fans are said to be angry that MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski made peace with Trump in a Mar-a-Lago visit last month, the ratings drop on their influential Beltway-focused program is no larger than the declines occurring across the rest of the network.
MSNBC has a viewer panel it uses for research purposes. According to people familiar with the data who were not authorized to discuss it publicly, there have been only a handful of complaints about the network’s election coverage. The network’s programming has remained popular on YouTube, where it reaches younger viewers who likely don’t have a cable subscription.
CNN improved on the lows it hit in 2023 but fell behind MSNBC for third place for the second consecutive year. As the pay-TV market deteriorates, CNN has stressed that it’s focused on digital distribution of its journalism, adding a paywall to its website, which Comscore says is visited by 147 million people a month. More subscription-based offerings are expected to be launched next year.
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